Six Tips for Better Online Group Discussions

Six Tips for Better Online Group Discussions

Have you ever wished your online discussions could be more like the give and take of a face-to-face conversation? Below are six tips for facilitating better online discussions.
 

1. Make your key points and questions stand out:

Forum discussions often generate a lot of text. This can make it hard for participants to scan and keep up with the conversation. Any easy way to enhance your post’s readability is to bold key ideas and questions.
 

2. Keep the conversation going:

End your post with a question to someone specifically or to the group in general. This will help keep the conversation going. Think of it as a way to handoff the conversation to someone else just like you would in a face-to-face conversation. Does this make sense?
 

3. Help other participants keep track of the conversation:

An easy way to help other participants follow your conversation — even on a flat forum where comments are simply stacked instead of indented is to provide a link to a previous post. To do this, go to the post you want to link to and right click on the post’s unique ID number. It is located in the gray menu bar above every post. It will be the 4 digit number on the far right of the menu bar. Right click on the number and select “Copy link”. Then paste it into your post as a link.
 

4. Build on previous ideas or points:

Good conversations are not just random comments, they build, deepen, and enrich a topic. Emphasize key points or comments from other members or posts that you like by @mentioning them. For example, you can say “Great Comment by @dsdow”. This will let them know you’ve referenced their post and make it easier to add your comments and insights to their comments. You can find anyone’s username by clicking on their display name below their photo or avatar. On their profile page you will see a text @username just below their display name. Copy this username and paste it into your post. As much as we want to add new ideas, we also want to help build up and expand other member’s ideas.
 

5. Encourage different perspectives:

The best discussions happen when there is a rich mix of different perspectives and points of view. Keeping a conversational space where these different viewpoints can be understood and welcomed is essential. There are many ways to do this in a positive and respectful way.

  • Look for something you appreciate or agree on with the other post. It may simply be appreciation for raising the question.
  • Suggest an alternative concern or viewpoint by saying “I’d like to suggest another way to look at this question.”
  • If you disagree, own your opinion or viewpoint by saying something like “I disagree with…or I want to raise a concern…and then explain why by providing some context.
  • Keep the focus on the issue or question being discussed…not the other person.
  • Ask for the story behind how someone came to this viewpoint. This will give you deeper insight into the other person’s perspective.

 

6. Share Stories:

Stories bring facts to life. They provide context, perspective, and are memorable. There’s nothing like a good story to pique interest or make our point compelling. Sharing or inviting stories is a fantastic way to engage others in a conversation or make your point. Just keep them short and relevant to the topic at hand and whenever possible make them “people stories”.